O’Donnell: The most intriguing team in the NCAA men’s tournament — and it’s not Illinois
SPRINKLE ENOUGH MONEY around any center court and a basketball game can take some fascinating twists and burns.
No one pines for a “tanked” event — unless the investor is in on the fix.
Then it's doctor, doctor!
The 2026 NCAA men's basketball tournament — set to tip off next Tuesday — will be the most dominant yet driven by NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) money to players and transfer-portal acquisitions.
IT'S NO NEWS THAT the power programs should once again flex supreme during March Madness.
Last year, the Final Four was comprised of the four No. 1 seeds — eventual champion Florida, runner-up Houston, Duke and Auburn.
That was only the second time since modern seeding began in 1979 and the first since 2008 that the selection committee's wavering wisdom held to the end.
SUNDAY, WHEN THE 68-TEAM FIELD is announced, the top four are expected to be Duke, Arizona, Michigan and Florida with Michigan State, UConn, Houston, Iowa State and Illinois a click behind.
(The Illini are trending the wrong way. They're not making 3-pointers and Brad Underwood, if playing to past performances, will squeeze almost all remaining juice out in this week's Big Ten tournament. He'll then have to rely on fumes, free throws and favorable draw to make the Big Capper's Sweet Sixteen.)
A RATIONAL BRACKET PICKER WOULD would tap in the top quartet as the Final Four and work backward to the round of 64.
While it's always fun to select a double-digit seed — hello Cameron Krutwig and the 11-seed Loyola Ramblers of 2017-18 — that's now awfully risky business.
Finding the sneak in Tier-2 could very well be the key to solving the 2026 Final Four.
AND THE SUSPICION IS:
Rick Pitino and St. John's.
The reason isn't the Red Storm's 25-6 record or Big East championship mark of 18-2.
Instead, it's the spectacular way the team sustained its only loss since Jan. 3.
That would be the 72-40 hogtie Danny Hurley and host UConn laid on the Johnnies two weeks ago.
St. John's didn't look merely bad; the well-resourced mercenaries from Queens looked as if they might have sent a band of intramural impostors.
BUT CONSIDER MORE:
Pitino isn't just a Basketball Hall of Famer (2013).
He's a 73-year-old with a hungry edge who had to work his multimillionaire tail off to get back to college basketball's prime time after getting run out of Louisville in 2017.
He's also partnered with Mike Repole — the fabulously wealthy vitamin-water spigot — to restore hoops glory to the prominent NYC Catholic university.
Repole is the school's principal NIL benefactor.
BOTH ALSO HAVE HISTORIES of sophisticated interface with thoroughbred horse racing and much of the sleight of hand that involves.
Pitino has started horses at the game's highest levels, including the Kentucky Derby.
Ditto for Repole, who also has the New York state of mind to put himself forth as a candidate for national commissioner if the lords of the sport ever create that sort of alpha role.
IN HORSE RACING, a starter often “needs a race,” an outing to enhance fitness or even to look notably laggard to set up a more favorable return down the road.
Deepest students of the sport can tell you that even the mythic Secretariat lost his final prep before his astonishing run to the Triple Crown in 1973.
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FROM HIS ROOTS 30 MILES OUTSIDE OF EDMONTON to his passing last weekend, Troy Murray unfailingly rubbed people the right way.
He could not fake being a good guy for the 43 years from when he first played for the Blackhawks until the sad day when he finally signed off as a team analyst alongside John Weideman on WGN-AM (720).
Murray was a positive presence in any group's traveling party. That's one reason Bob Pulford and Bill Wirtz took a liking to him all those years ago and he eventually was given what was a lifetime broadcast/ambassador position with the franchise.
TWO ON-ICE ASSOCIATES OF NOTE were Grant Mulvey and Eddie Olczyk.
When the fresh-laced Murray arrived in Chicago off a gutty NCAA championship at North Dakota — age 19 — he had no private residence yet.
Mulvey and wife, Pam, quickly corrected that, giving the young bachelor the bottom bunk bed below son Kyle at their home.
THAT'S ALSO WHY MURRAY CONCLUDED his playing career — one year after winning his sole Stanley Cup with Colorado (1995-96) — with the Chicago Wolves. Mulvey was president, GM and head coach of the team, then in the International Hockey League.
As for Olczyk, Murray mentored “Edzo” upon the homegrown rookie's arrival in 1984. They later both married flight attendants, stood up in each other's wedding and far down the ice, fought variants of the same awful disease, cancer.
SEVEN WEEKS AGO, despite clearly declining health, Murray somehow made it to a funeral home in Skokie for the wake of Pulford.
No one who knew him well was surprised at No. 19's gallantry.
Or Troy Murray's everlasting good-guy resolve.
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.